Tabletop Together
There are certain games that make us stop scrolling and immediately think:
Okay… we need to get this to the table.
Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances is quickly becoming one of those games.
We already knew about Marvel: Crisis Protocol, Atomic Mass Games' tactical Marvel miniatures game. But Alliances is doing something different.
Instead of asking you to build two opposing squads and battle against another player, Alliances takes the characters, miniatures and superhero action associated with Crisis Protocol and turns them into a standalone cooperative board game experience.
The first release is Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances — Night of the Goblin, featuring Spider-Man, Miles Morales, Ghost-Spider and Black Cat teaming up against Green Goblin and his forces.
And the more we've learned about the system, the more interested we've become.
Because this doesn't look like Atomic Mass Games simply slapped a cooperative mode onto Crisis Protocol.
It looks like the beginning of an entirely new expandable Marvel tabletop system.
So What Exactly Is Crisis Protocol Alliances?
The easiest way to explain it is:
Marvel heroes + miniatures + cooperative missions + character progression + boss battles.
Night of the Goblin is a standalone cooperative game for 2–4 players, recommended for ages 14+, with an advertised average playtime of around 45 minutes. Everything needed to play comes in the box.
The story starts with Green Goblin causing chaos across New York City.
Players take control of:
🕷️ Spectacular Spider-Man — Peter Parker
🕷️ Ultimate Spider-Man — Miles Morales
🕸️ Ghost-Spider — Gwen Stacy
🐈⬛ Black Cat — Felicia Hardy
And instead of fighting one another, you're working together against the game.
Green Goblin isn't coming alone, either.
You'll face Goblin Army goons, robotic Spider-Slayers, War Goblins and eventually Norman Osborn himself.
That's immediately one of the things we like about Alliances.
We're big fans of games that create stories around the table.
There's something different about everyone staring at the same impossible situation and trying to figure out how you're going to survive it together.
And superheroes are practically made for that kind of experience.
How Does Crisis Protocol Alliances Play?
We're going to keep this as a brief gameplay overview rather than a full rules tutorial. Once we've gotten it to our own table, we'd love to do a proper Tabletop Together How to Play.
The basic structure is easy to understand.
You're controlling Marvel heroes with different abilities and playstyles while moving around scenario boards, fighting enemies, interacting with objectives and trying to complete whatever challenge Green Goblin has thrown at you.
But here's where things get interesting.
Every Hero Actually Feels Different
The four heroes aren't simply different miniatures with slightly different numbers.
Atomic Mass Games designed them around different roles and approaches.
For example, Peter Parker is versatile and can manipulate enemy positioning. Black Cat leans heavily into mobility and interacting with objectives. The idea is that players need to understand what their individual hero does well and then combine those abilities as a team.
That's exactly what we want from a cooperative superhero game.
Spider-Man shouldn't feel like Black Cat.
Black Cat shouldn't feel like Miles.
A great cooperative game gives everyone their own little moment where the table suddenly says:
"WAIT. You can do WHAT?"
And then somebody comes up with a ridiculous plan.
That's half the fun.
Your Heroes Level Up
This might be the feature that interests us most.
As you defeat enemies and complete encounters, you earn experience points.
That experience allows your hero to level up and unlock more powerful abilities. The box includes 44 character level-up cards alongside individual character dashboards and XP tracking components.
So your character isn't necessarily playing exactly the same way at the beginning and end of the adventure.
There's progression.
And progression creates something tabletop games are very good at:
attachment.
You're not simply moving Spider-Man around a board.
You're developing your version of Spider-Man for this particular adventure.
That little RPG-like element is something we're really looking forward to experiencing.
The Missions Aren't Just "Beat Everything Up"
This is probably the part that pushed our interest in Alliances considerably higher.
Atomic Mass Games recently provided a detailed look at the scenarios in Night of the Goblin, and they're surprisingly varied.
Players complete two stages before confronting Green Goblin in the final boss battle, choosing from three included stages and deciding which order to tackle them.
One scenario has Green Goblin poisoning New Yorkers with Goblin Serum.
You have to defeat enemies, collect ingredients and bring matching ingredients to Oscorp equipment to create an antidote.
Another has Goblin planting bombs around the Daily Bugle.
Now you're racing against a countdown while trying to disarm bombs as enemies interfere.
Another has the Goblin Army pouring into Times Square through manholes.
Instead of simply defeating everything, you're physically manipulating terrain to block the manholes and stop more enemies from appearing.
That's exactly the kind of variety we want.
Because if every mission amounted to:
Spawn bad guys → punch bad guys → win
the novelty could disappear quickly.
Instead, the game is asking:
Can you fight AND solve the problem?
And Then There's Green Goblin
Eventually everything leads to the showdown on the Brooklyn Bridge.
And even that isn't simply a giant enemy with a massive health pool.
Green Goblin moves around the battlefield along randomized flight paths, potentially hammering heroes caught in his path.
The players can create Web Lines across his movement routes. If Goblin hits one, he's stopped, takes damage and receives the Shock condition.
Meanwhile, your team ultimately needs to Daze him three times to defeat him.
That's cool.
You're not only asking:
"How much damage can we do?"
You're looking at positioning, predicting movement and coordinating the team.
It makes the final fight part superhero battle and part tactical puzzle.
One of Our Favorite Ideas: F.A.S.T. Minis
Here's another reason we think Alliances could reach people who normally wouldn't touch a miniatures game.
The line introduces what Atomic Mass Games calls F.A.S.T. Minis.
They're detailed hard-plastic miniatures that use push-fit assembly, meaning you don't need glue just to get the characters onto the table.
Clip the components from the sprue, assemble them and play. You can still paint and customize them if that's part of the hobby you enjoy.
We really like this decision.
Traditional miniature gaming can look incredible—but there's also an intimidation factor for someone walking into the hobby for the first time.
"Wait… I have to build these?"
"What glue do I need?"
"Now I need to paint them?"
Alliances potentially becomes a bridge.
You can get into the game relatively quickly, and if painting Spider-Man at 1:00 AM eventually becomes your newest obsession…
Well…
Welcome to miniature gaming. 😂
What Comes in Night of the Goblin?
This isn't a small character pack.
The box contains 23 miniatures in total: four playable heroes, Green Goblin and 18 enemy minions. You also get two double-sided stage boards, four character dashboards, character and enemy cards, 44 level-up cards, stage and boss cards, dice, tracking cubes, terrain/objective/challenge tokens and the other components required to play.
And there's an interesting bonus for existing Crisis Protocol players.
The box also includes five MCP Stat Cards, allowing several of these characters to cross into the traditional Marvel: Crisis Protocol miniatures game.
That's a clever connection between the two systems.
What Makes Crisis Protocol Alliances Exciting?
For us, it isn't any one mechanic.
It's the combination.
You have:
Cooperative gameplay.
Marvel characters people already love.
Detailed miniatures.
Different hero playstyles.
Character progression.
Objective-based scenarios.
Boss battles.
Push-fit miniatures.
An expandable game system.
That's a pretty compelling mixture.
But there's also something else.
This looks teachable.
And that's important to us.
We love deep tabletop games. But there's also something special about having a game where you can say:
"Hey, you like Spider-Man? Sit down. We'll show you how to play."
That is how tabletop communities grow.
Sometimes the gateway isn't finding the perfect "beginner board game."
Sometimes it's putting something recognizable in front of someone and giving them a reason to pull up a chair.
Marvel can do that.
Alliances Is Just Getting Started
This is where our excitement really goes up.
Atomic Mass Games has made it clear that Night of the Goblin is the beginning of the Alliances system, not a standalone experiment.
Each Alliances release will work independently.
But they're also being designed to be cross-compatible.
As your collection grows, Atomic Mass Games says players will be able to mix and match heroes, villains and minions between Alliances games.
Think about the possibilities there.
Today:
🕷️ Spider-Man vs. Green Goblin.
Tomorrow?
Maybe you're taking heroes from completely different boxes and throwing them against villains they were never originally packaged with.
That's where Alliances could develop serious replayability.
Next Up: Attack of the Sentinels
Atomic Mass Games has already revealed the second Alliances game:
Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances — Attack of the Sentinels
It's currently planned for early 2027.
And if you've spent any time around Marvel's mutants, the title tells you plenty.
Sentinels.
That's immediately exciting because it gives Alliances an opportunity to move beyond Spider-Man's corner of Marvel and into the X-Men side of the universe.
More importantly, because the boxes are cross-compatible, we're not simply looking at "another cooperative Marvel board game."
We're watching a system grow.
And Then Comes Kang
Atomic Mass Games has also revealed the third Alliances set:
The Once and Future Kang
This one brings the Avengers into conflict with Kang.
That's when our imagination starts getting dangerous.
Spider-Man.
X-Men.
Avengers.
Green Goblin.
Sentinels.
Kang.
And potentially characters and enemies moving between those adventures?
Okay. Now you've got our attention.
If Atomic Mass Games continues expanding into other corners of Marvel, there is an enormous amount of material available.
We're already imagining what we'd love to see someday:
Guardians of the Galaxy.
Thanos.
Daredevil and the street-level heroes.
Doctor Strange and supernatural Marvel.
Fantastic Four.
Doctor Doom.
Galactus.
Maybe even massive multi-box scenarios.
To be clear: those are OUR wishlist ideas, not announced products.
But that's the fun of seeing a new expandable system at the beginning.
And Atomic Mass Games Is Already Adding More Content
This is a particularly encouraging development.
On September 5, 2026, Atomic Mass Games announced additional Print & Play stages for Night of the Goblin.
Three additional stages are planned, with a new challenge being added each week. The announced scenarios include chasing escaped spiders and rescuing civilians.
That's significant.
The game has barely arrived and we're already seeing additional scenario support.
If Atomic Mass Games continues using downloadable stages to supplement physical releases, Alliances could potentially develop a much larger library of adventures without requiring players to buy another $100 box every time they want a new scenario.
That's something we're going to be watching closely.
What We're Looking Forward to Most
The thing we're most excited about isn't necessarily Green Goblin.
It isn't even Spider-Man.
It's the potential of the system itself.
If Atomic Mass Games can maintain three things—
approachable rules, meaningful character progression and genuinely different scenarios—
Alliances could occupy a really interesting space between traditional board gaming and miniature gaming.
It gives Marvel fans recognizable characters.
It gives board gamers cooperative tactical gameplay.
It gives miniature gamers models to assemble and paint.
And it gives groups something we value tremendously:
a reason to sit around a table together.
That's why Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances has our attention.
Should You Check Out Night of the Goblin?
Based on what Atomic Mass Games has shown so far, we'd especially take a look if you:
Love Marvel or Spider-Man
Enjoy cooperative games
Like character progression
Want tactical combat without jumping immediately into a competitive miniatures system
Enjoy painting miniatures—or want an approachable introduction to the hobby
Want a game that can potentially grow with future releases
The MSRP is currently $99.99, so this isn't an impulse-buy card game.
But there's a lot in the box, and the cross-compatible future of Alliances makes this considerably more interesting to us than if Night of the Goblin were simply a one-and-done release.
We haven't finished forming our opinion yet.
We need to get it to the table.
And that's exactly what we plan to do.
Want to Check It Out For Yourself?
If Night of the Goblin sounds like your kind of game:
Check out Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances — Night of the Goblin on Amazon:
https://amzn.to/4gFdf6T
Affiliate Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Some links in this article are affiliate links, which means Tabletop Together may earn a commission from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you.
And if you've already played it, we want to hear from you.
Did Alliances live up to your expectations?
Which hero is the most fun?
And what Marvel storyline would YOU want Atomic Mass Games to tackle next?
Let us know.
Because if there's one thing more fun than discovering a new game…
it's discovering who you're going to play it with.
Until next time, get a game off the shelf, invite someone to the table, and make some memories.
🎲 Find Your Table. Build Your Community.
— The Tabletop Together Team